


Chained to the Sky

by brevitas



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Future AU, Gen, M/M, Wingfic, Wings AU, genetic engineering AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-13
Updated: 2014-03-12
Packaged: 2018-01-15 13:26:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1306501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brevitas/pseuds/brevitas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the future Republic of America genetic engineering is the norm. But when things get too out of hand and winged children are born, the government forbids creating any more. These children go up ostracized in a society who discriminates against them for modified genes they received in the womb.</p>
<p>Across the country in New Los Angeles, Enjolras is the first to stand up and tell the nation that they will no longer take this maltreatment. Through a series of fiascos concocted by his friend Jehan Grantaire shows up in New Los Angeles to inadvertently join the revolution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chained to the Sky

In the early 2020's genetic engineering was introduced to the public. It was deified as a cure-all for the diseases that plagued children in the womb; Huntington's, Down's, AIDS. It even promised to abolish the slightest possibility that the infant might later develop cancer.

Predictably, parents leapt for a chance to be a beta tester. For nearly a decade the genes were manipulated singularly for the benefit of good health; pregnant couples simply didn't need to worry about sick babies anymore. For a time the sheer optimism in the populace was refreshing.

But fads were common even among adults and they began to ask the scientists what they could do with physical attributes. Could they enhance the child's ‘natural’ beauty? Make them tall, short, slender, smart? The scientists began tweaking their formula, adjusted that which they had used for years, and started engineering children that would grow up in a generation to be lauded as the Perfects.

With all this power placed in expecting parents' hands it was no surprise that they developed stranger tastes. Those from the Perfect generation went on to have children of their own and began asking more questions. Could the scientists permanently change hair color? Eye color? Could they make them green-skinned? It went even further as the rich did their best to make their child unique in a world where fitting in was the expectation. Was it possible for them to better the children's eyesight? To make it possible for them to breathe underwater? Could they survive long falls without breaking their bones or switch their pain receptors off at will?

The idea of wings began as a trope in the contemporary fiction. Mary Hart's bestseller was the tipping point; the well-read novel featuring a genetically engineered child with working wings. The parents never considered that even in fiction the character had been ostracized by her society; they started bringing the idea of wings to their prenatal scientists, mentioning eagles or sparrows or macaws, gauging how the geneticists reacted. Most had no problem with it. The few that did quietly resigned.

The scientists needed a preselected species in order to work the DNA into the infant so the parents became more focused in their desires; they wanted a baby girl with undersized hummingbird wings, or a boy with a great pair of wings borrowed from a pelican. The scientists began modifying other things to make flight possible; hollow bones, longer sight capacity, enlarged lungs for better oxygen intake, broader pectoral muscles to support the 20-foot wingspans. That generation was called the Flighted. As babies they were adored; as youths, when the government cracked down on genetic experimenting, they were outcast.

Not all children in their generation had been born with wings. Many of the poor opted only for correction of childhood diseases; their children grew up normal, a minority among their peers. The government produced a document that outlawed the addition of wings to unborn babies only three years after the first had been made. Parents grumbled about returning to the way things used to be and did not consider how their children might grow up in a world that envied their luck for being engineered in a narrow three year span.

As the children got older the discrimination got worse. The government did nothing to police it; the problem plagued only certain cities of the Republic of America and they did not consider it an issue large enough for federal attention. If someone from the Flighted generation was identified they were barred from restaurants; their job application sheet could be torn asunder; private businesses were legally allowed to turn them away. It became practice for them to hide their wings as best they could or move far away from prying eyes.

The Les Amis movement changed that. It began on the campus of a little university in New Los Angeles; it was run by a young man named Enjolras who did not hide his broad tundra swan wings during press conferences. They were perfectly white and so massive that they dragged on the ground if he did not lift them; yet with them he could fly, and with them he garnered national attention.

The Flighted generation began crawling out of the woodwork. They flocked to New Los Angeles to join the cause, using wings they had not dared to spread in years. Programs featuring them were everywhere; plastered to bar walls, cycled through the news, gossiped about on the radio. Grantaire first heard about them a month after they’d metaphorically ‘come out’, when Jehan ran into his house clutching a flyer.

“Grantaire!” He called exuberantly, throwing himself down on his friend’s bed. He’d shed his jacket the moment he stepped safely inside and his grey and white wings trailed a second after him, flopping onto either side of the mattress where he laid down on his stomach.

“Something amazing has happened!” He propped his hand under his chin and grinned. “We have to go to New Los Angeles.”

Grantaire swiveled in his chair and raised an eyebrow. He was sitting at his desk, his hands smudged with charcoal, the papers in front of him in a chaotic disassortment. “Why?” He asked blandly, wiping his hands on his jeans and only worsening the mess.

Jehan sighed dramatically. “You’re supposed to ask ‘what’s in New Los Angeles,” he said.

Grantaire decided to humor him. “What’s in New Los Angeles?” He asked, smiling.

Jehan grinned and sat up. “The revolution.”

+++++

Grantaire would be completely inefficient at describing what happened next. Jehan had always been the sole person capable of convincing Grantaire to do something he didn’t want to do; somehow they ended up on an airplane two hours after Jehan had sprinted into his house.

The quarters were cramped (even three decades of space travel hadn’t successfully convinced any companies that bigger airplanes were the way to go) and Grantaire had to wedge his carry-on bag underneath his knees in order to keep it. Jehan, engineered to be slight and willowy, predictably fit perfectly.

He bounced in his seat like a child, running his fingers absentmindedly through his hair. The airport’s body scans had revealed his wings, as Grantaire had warned him they would; security had stripped him of his jacket and made him walk without it onto the plane. Everyone had of course stared. They couldn’t turn Jehan away now, not with the revolution brewing in the west, but that didn’t mean service had to actually serve him.

(Grantaire, who had built entirely illegal deflective pseudo-metal pieces into his jacket, escaped unscathed. To the other passengers he appeared as the one human capable of sitting next to a Flighted without complaint.)

Jehan didn’t let a little thing like being glared at stop him from being excited. “I can’t remember the last time I flew,” he said wistfully, leaning across Grantaire’s lap to peer out the window. They hadn’t even taken off yet so Grantaire didn’t begrudge him stealing the view.

A man across the aisle loudly cleared his throat. Jehan and Grantaire both looked at him, the latter frowning over his friend’s shoulder.

“Keep your hands to yourself,” the stranger said primly, addressing Jehan. He nodded to Grantaire. “I’m sure he doesn’t want you crawling all over him.”

Jehan screwed his mouth up and Grantaire had to grab his wrist to keep him from saying anything. People always underestimated Jehan. He was over six feet tall, sure, but his parents had installed in him femininely beautiful good looks and long gold-white hair that he’d used to keep shorn. He’d since come to understand that people hated him all the more for it and now wore it long enough that it tickled his waist.

“It’s fine,” Grantaire said to the man, blank-faced. “He doesn’t mean any harm.”

He squeezed Jehan’s wrist when he opened his mouth to say something else and the poet grunted instead, turning forcefully away from the man. He took a deep breath to clear the anger from his face and then resumed looking out the window so he wouldn’t get up and throttle half the people on the plane.

Grantaire pat the back of his hand and begrudgingly Jehan smiled.

+++++

The next thirty minutes were much of the same. Grantaire was only glad engineers had figured out how to make commercial planes go faster; he wasn’t sure he’d be able to endure any more of the gawky whispering and hostile stares. Grantaire had never gone out in public before with an uncovered Flighted friend; this experience confirmed that he never willingly would again.

The moment they landed Jehan pulled a jacket out of his luggage and yanked it on. He had to awkwardly shuffle his wings around before he could get it all to fit (a wingspan of their size was simply not meant to be folded up and tucked away) but finally he managed it and pulled the zipper up with a resounding _hiss_.

“Okay,” he said, recovering his cheerful attitude. “Let’s get a move on before people recognize me from the plane.”

They walked outside together and the contrast in people’s interactions with them was jarring. Suddenly everybody was smiley again; Jehan, as pretty as he was, got plenty of flirty looks and lingering hands. He parried them well, smiling back so nobody would feel slighted but extricating himself within seconds. He was unusually adept at turning away interested people without offending anyone.

They hailed a taxi and climbed inside. Jehan gave the driver directions to a hotel not two blocks from campus.

“So we can walk down and watch one of meetings,” he explained, riffling through his bag to find his omni tool. Finally uncovering it behind a collection of pressed flowers he opened up a schedule the Les Amis had put online. “This one says Enjolras will be there,” he said, skimming the information. He glanced up at Grantaire, who was watching out the window with as much disinterest as possible.

Jehan elbowed him hard in the side. “Look,” he said, pushing his omni into Grantaire’s hands. “This is _cool_. We’ll get to see the leader of the revolution in action.”

Grantaire grunted and passed it back. “Sure,” he said, setting his elbow against the door. “It’ll be a blast.”

They charged the cab ride to Grantaire’s credit card (Jehan couldn’t manage to keep a job; he always got fired for bullshit reasons that watered down to getting caught with his wings out) and then walked the rest of the way to the hotel. The first person they passed with her wings out made them both stop in their tracks and stare. The Flighted woman, misunderstanding their surprise, flipped them off and crossed the street. Her blackbird wings bobbed behind her with each angry step.

“Holy shit,” Grantaire said, looking askance at Jehan. “That was—“

“The _revolution_ ,” Jehan said excitedly, fervor burning in his green eyes. He seized Grantaire’s elbow and dragged him down the sidewalk. “Come on,” he said. “We gotta get there before it starts.”

They saw a couple more Flighted without jackets, their wings spread gloriously behind them like they were meant to be, huge arches of wonderfully colored feathers and glossy patterns. Grantaire and Jehan realized all of them wore shirts with the Les Amis logo on them and, apart from the blackbird girl, not a one of them traveled alone.

“They probably get jumped a lot,” Grantaire remarked when him and Jehan stepped to the side to make room for a young man with house sparrow wings accompanied by one with a barn owl’s. The sparrow sported a black eye and the owl a sling that kept his arm tight to his chest.

Jehan nodded. “The price of change,” he said quietly.

They were unmolested right up until they tried to walk into the auditorium where the Les Amis were hosting their meeting. Two men peeled away from an inner door and approached them, wings flared slightly behind them like raised fists. Grantaire had never noticed how expressive the wings could be until he’d seen them uncovered like this.

“Who’re you?” The bulkier one asked, a man rippled with muscle and tattoos. He was shorter, like a compact wrestler, and had an enormous pair of wings copied from a bearded vulture. They were possibly more intimidating than he would ever have been on his own; even modern day humans recognized vultures as an omen of death.

“I’m Jehan,” he said, stepping forward with a fearless smile. “This is Grantaire. We’re here for the meeting.”

Mr. Muscles lifted an eyebrow and glanced at his companion. He was much taller, strikingly redheaded, and chewing absentmindedly on a cigar. His skin was dark enough that his hair looked almost unnaturally scarlet. His wings were a strange iridescent hue, speckled with white and edged with a musky brown. Grantaire would later identify them as a European starling’s; common yet striking.

“Are you two Flighted?” He asked. He carried an accent from somewhere that Grantaire couldn’t place but had surely been born here—theirs was the only country to ever produce children with functional wings.

At his question Jehan frowned a little and looked over at Grantaire. He’d always kept his wings to himself; as a child because they’d usually given people the wrong impression, as an adult because it was safer that way. But Grantaire nodded a little and Jehan’s smile returned in full force.

“Yes,” he said. “We’re both Flighted.”

Mr. Muscles and the Redhead exchanged a long look. “Let us see,” the Redhead said finally.

Jehan shrugged out of his jacket without argument. He draped it over his arm and shook his wings out, unfurled them until his back popped and his muscles warmed. His were a pretty basic pattern of blue-grey, black and white, most of it geometric, colors layered one after another.

Mr. Muscles eyed them. “What’re those?” He asked after a second. He was grinning now and the expression softened his face from ‘dumb brute’ to something much more intelligent. He played stupid far too well. “You some sorta songbird?”

Grantaire snorted. Jehan’s pleasant smile remained that way. “Kinda,” he said, and left it at that.

The Redhead nodded to Grantaire. “Your turn.”

Grantaire stripped off his jacket much more slowly than Jehan had. It was stiff in the back to keep the bulk of his wings hidden and he had to move carefully so as not to jostle them too badly. He was wearing a tee shirt underneath cut in the traditional bastardized style typical of the Flighted; it was nearly impossible for them to find clothing to fit their wings in big name stores so for the most part they tore holes in the back of everything they owned.

He gingerly spread his wings, wincing as they opened to their full breadth, nearly as big as the wings of the Les Amis’ leader he’d seen on Jehan’s pamphlet on the flight here. He shook them out, brought one around to absentmindedly tug at a loose feather. His wings were primarily blue, a clear cerulean that belonged to the sky, but splotched wonderfully with white. Against his olive skin and black hair and dark tattoo sleeves they were nearly breath-taking.

The Redhead looked far more interested now. He plucked his cigar from his mouth and tucked it into his jean pocket, approached Grantaire with an almost dreamy expression. “These are perfect,” he said, reached out and grabbed the top of one of his wings to better inspect it. Grantaire was so startled that he didn’t move, just stared at the Redhead as he touched calloused fingers to his feathers.

Mr. Muscles laughed. “I’m Bahorel,” he said, folding his arms across his chest, “That’s Feuilly. Art director for the movement; he puts all the ads together.”

“He would be perfect,” Feuilly repeated, turning around to look at Bahorel. “Picture him on the front of a magazine. I’ve never _seen_ wings like these.”

This time Grantaire shied back when Feuilly tried to touch them. He frowned at him but didn’t get a chance to speak before Jehan did.

“They’re from a pied masked lovebird,” he said, stepping up to Grantaire’s side. “His mom had one when she was young.”

“You have to come meet Enjolras,” Feuilly said, shook his head once with another long look at Grantaire’s wings. He’d never seen anything even close to them; he itched to find a canvas and paint, to try and capture the stunning colors of Grantaire’s feathers.

He lifted a hand to his jaw and pressed on a small flesh-colored mic on his throat that neither Grantaire nor Jehan had noticed. “We’re sending two Flighted in to see Enjolras,” he said. He waited a beat, received a reply none of them could hear, and then nodded at Bahorel.

“Come on then,” Bahorel said, pulling the door open for them. “Our illustrious leader awaits.”

**Author's Note:**

> derp derp derp I'm on my way out the door so I can't explain much buuut thanks to all my tumblr followers who encouraged me to write this it was actually super fun!
> 
> title is from the quote by Bob Dylan; "No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky."
> 
> uuuuh ask me if there are any questions about things? oh! this is what Grantaire's wings look like (I figured they're uncommon enough to warrant an explanation); http://www.agapornis-personatus.com/images/birds/pied/pied7.jpg
> 
> also yes this will be a series, I'm doing chapters this time around, I'll see if I can actually keep this updated c:
> 
> kiss kiss adios follow me on tumblr at idfaciendumest if you'd like or ask me things here or whatever I live to talk to peeps if they like my shit c:


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